Yeah, yeah, we know we sort of skipped a month, even though we DID release two, count ‘em, TWO Halloween Booootie CDs last week. But we know you can’t live on Halloween mashups alone, so we’re offering up another Top 20 to make it up to you.

And seeing as we’re leaving the country for a month to bring Bootie to Hong Kong, Bangkok, Sydney, and Melbourne, you better enjoy it, because who knows if we’ll have our shiz together after our Asia/Australia tour to cobble together a Top 10 for December? Especially since we’ll be working on the much-awaited “Best of Bootie 2010″ CD, which we’ll be releasing around Christmas. So enjoy this double-dose of the Bootie Top 10, sorted alphabetically by bootlegger.

Love, A+D

Dan Mei – Stronger Than Jolene (Dolly Parton vs. Britney Spears) - Denmark
Our current DJ book contains over 280 CDs, with an average of about 18 mashups on each. (Do the math!) With that volume of material, it’s not surprising that occasionally, some quality work gets lost in the mix, only to be rediscovered years later. This is one of those tunes, which has recently been getting lots of spins at Bootie, especially with the whole “early ’00s” retro thing happening … right on time! And personally, we loves us some Dolly!

Dave Wrangler – Summertime Stylo (DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince vs. Gorillaz) – Houston
Given the song’s lyrical content, this should have been in the Bootie Top 10 months ago. But this song’s chillaxed vibe made it a bit of a sleeper hit for us. Still, seeing as that we’re headed to Australia in a couple weeks to do the first Bootie Sydney and Bootie Melbourne, we’re actually right on time for summertime down under!

Daw-Gun – Love Butterfly (Lady Gaga vs. Crazy Town) – New York City
Daw-Gun has been an up-and-coming producer out of New York for a while now, and he really nails it on this one, taking Crazy Town’s one-hit wonder “Butterfly” and updating it with some Gaga, ten years after the fact. What was that I said about the early ’00s being “retro” already?

DJ Fac - Seven Nation Army’s Going On (Backstreet Boys vs. White Stripes) – Switzerland
Here’s another mashup “lost from the vaults” that we’ve recently rediscovered — and it never fails to get the crowd at Bootie jumping and singing along. You know, when we thought about the ’90s thing happening, we figured it would be iconic grunge and alternative bands that would be riding the retro wave, not Backstreet Boys. But hey, let’s face it, this is easier to sing along to than the Stone Temple Pilots, and everyone secretly loves this Backstreet Boys song. Yes, it looks they DO have it “going on for years.”

Faroff – Ray No Speak No Americano (Ray Charles vs. Yolanda Be Cool & DCUP) - Los Angeles / BrazIl
Brazil’s Faroff — by way of Boston and Los Angeles — is one of Bootie’s resident DJs, and his output has gotten increasingly more tuned to the dance floor. Here, he manages to bridge half a century in one song, taking Ray Charles’ 1954 classic (which was sampled in Kanye West’s ‘Gold Digger’) and blends it seamlessly with this past summer’s huge club hit “We Speak No Americano.”

Hawkins – XXX (X vs. The XX) – St. Paul, Minnesota
LOVE this one. Wow. We’ve gotta admit, we didn’t have high hopes for this one when we first saw it. Most mashups with a clever pairing of band names or song titles usually come off sounding forced. Just because your mashup has a clever name, doesn’t mean it’s necessarily going to SOUND clever. But this is a RARE exception. Hawkins gets it, producing a haunting mashup that takes a song with often overlooked dark themes (“Los Angeles”) and puts it into a more proper musical context. We love The XX, but after hearing so many mashups phoned in with simplistic, easy rap vocals plopped on top, this is a welcome surprise.

Jarod Ripley – Just The Way U Are (Bruno Mars vs. Freeez) - France
Bruno Mars is so hot right now, how could we not include him this month? French producer Jarod Ripley fuses him quite nicely with Freeez’s forgotten 1983 favorite “I.O.U.,” making for a beautiful blending of genres and decades. Nope, the ’80s will never truly die.

THE KLEPTONES DOUBLE SHOTThe Kleptones – Jump You Fucker (Cee Lo Green vs. Van Halen) – Brighton, UKThe Kleptones – Lung Cancer (Radiohead vs. Amerie J) – Brighton, UK
In the world of mashups, The Kleptones are one of our favorites, so we couldn’t resist doing a double shot! The first one is a brand-new track fusing Cee Lo’s expletive chorused YouTube hit with Van Halen and their awesome keyboard breakdown, specially made into a “Bootie edit” for your dancing pleasure. The second is off their “Shits & Giggles” compilation, turning Radiohead’s brooding song into something far funkier than it was originally intended.

DJ Lobsterdust - Celeplanes (M.I.A. vs. Rare Earth) - New York City
Speaking of funk … here, Rare Earth’s 1971 hit gets a contemporary update with M.I.A. on vocals. We used to pretty much reserve a spot on each month’s Top 10 for DJ Lobsterdust. But he’s been recently busy, so his mashup output has slowed down a wee bit; we had to dig back a few months to rediscover this gem.

DJ Morgoth – Carry On My Wayward Island (Kansas vs. Pendulum) – Berlin
This past year has seen several acapellas from classic ’70s and ’80s songs leaked onto the internet, greatly expanding the bootleg production options available to mashup producers. No longer limited to only using tired and overused rap and pop vocals, many producers are becoming extremely creative with what’s floating around out there. Bootie Berlin’s DJ Morgoth wasn’t even alive when Kansas’ classic rock opus first came out, but that hasn’t stopped him from turning the song into an electro club-banger! Genre-f*ck alert! And from what we can tell, this Pendulum track may not even be released in America, so once again, a mashup is exposing us to new music we would have otherwise never heard. You’re welcome, record companies.

Party Ben – Beat Sauce (Michael Jackson vs. Duck Sauce) – San Francisco
Considering that Duck Sauce is a collaboration between DJs Armand Van Helden and A-Trak, it’s no surprise that their name-dropping “Barbra Streisand” track (which actually has nothing to do with Babs) has become a big club hit. Here, Party Ben adds the vocals of “Beat It,” and replaces the spoken “Barbra Streisand” bit with a spoken “Michael Jackson” bit instead. Clever!

DJ Shyboy – Metro Life (T.I. & Rihanna vs. Berlin) – Los Angeles
Berlin was such a quintessential LA band back in the day, that it’s no surprise that an LA mashup producer came up with this one. Bootie LA’s Shyboy turns the T.I. and Rihanna hit into retro ’80s goodness. And we’re pretty damn sure you’ll be hearing this one on Bootie LA’s dancefloor for the ’80s vs Electropop Night later this month.

DJ Tripp - Run This Firefly (Jay-Z ft. Rihanna vs. Owl City) - Santa Cruz, CA
We’ve featured several “Fireflies” mashups in the Top 10 over the past few months, but this is actually the one that gets played the most at Bootie. Plus, it’s produced by DJ Tripp, who is our trusted resident DJ at Bootie SF while we’re away in Asia and Australia this month, so it’s only fitting that he has an awesome track in this month’s Top 10.